Chesterfield House

Chesterfield-House, South-Audley-Street,—is near ½ a mile on the L. from 261, Oxford-street, and by the W. end of Curzon-street, May-fair.

Chesterfield-House, South Audley-street, is situated by the west end of Curzon-street, May-fair, opposite Stanhope-street. It was build by the celebrated Earl of Chesterfield, and is one of the handsomest mansions in the metropolis. The wings are connected with the body of the house, by two very beautiful colonnades. The magnificent staircase was removed from the vast mansion of the Duke of Chandos, at Cannons, when it was pulled down.

Chesterfield House, South Audley Street, the town house of the Earls of Chesterfield, but let (1849) to tne Marquis of Abercorn at a rental of £3000, and sold in 1869 to Charles Magniac, Esq., for £175,000. It was designed by Isaac Ware, architect (the editor of a translation of Palladio's Architecture), for Philip, fourth Earl of Chesterfield, author of the celebrated Letters to his Son. The earl took possession of his new house March 13, 1749.¹ The second Earl of Chesterfield (so often mentioned by De Grammont in his Memoirs) lived in Bloomsbury Square.

I have yet finished nothing but my boudoir and my library; the former is the gayest and most cheerful room in England, the latter the best. My garden is now turfed, planted, and sown, and will, in two months more, make a scene of verdure and flowers not common in London.—Lord Chesterfield to S. Dayrolles, London, March 31, O.S. 1749. Hôtel Chesterfield.

In the magnificent mansion which the Earl erected in Audley Street, you may still see his favourite apartments, furnished and decorated as he left them; among the rest, what he boasted of as "the finest room in London"—and perhaps even now it remains unsurpassed—his spacious and beautiful library, looking on the finest private garden in London. The walls are covered half-way up with rich and classical stores of literature; above the cases are in close series the portraits of eminent authors, French and English, with most of whom he had conversed; over these, and immediately under the massive cornice, extend all round in foot-long capitals the Horatian lines:—

NUNC . VETERUM . LIBRIS . NUNC . SOMNO . ET . INERTIBUS . HORIS. DUCERE . SOLICITÆ . JUCUNDA . OBLIVIA . VITÆ.

On the mantelpieces and cabinets stand busts of old orators, interspersed with voluptuous vases and bronzes, antique or Italian, and airy statuettes in marble or alabaster, of nude or seminude Opera nymphs. We shall never recall that princely room without fancying Chesterfield receiving in it a visit of his only child's mother—while probably some new favourite was sheltered in the dim mysterious little boudoir within—which still remains also in its original blue damask and fretted gold-work, as described to Madame de Monconseil.—Quarterly Review, No. 152, p. 484.

Lord Chesterfield, in his Letters to his Son, speaks of the canonical pillars of his house, meaning the columns brought from Canons, the seat of the Duke of Chandos. The grand staircase of marble came from the same magnificent house. Sir Thomas Lawrence's unfinished portrait of himself, which till recently adorned the house, was sold to the Royal Academy for £400. The lantern of copper-gilt for eighteen candles, bought by the Earl of Chesterfield at the sale at Houghton, the seat of Sir Robert Walpole, is celebrated in a once famous ballad by Fielding, in the Craftsman, called "The Norfolk Lanthorn, a New Ballad." Stanhope Street, adjoining the house (also built by Lord Chesterfield), stands on ground belonging to the Dean and Chapter of Westminster. The earl is said to have had a hard bargain of the ground; he certainly thought so, from the following clause in his will:—

In case my said godson, Philip Stanhope, shall, at any time hereinafter, keep, or be concerned in keeping of, any racehorses, or pack of hounds, or reside one night at Newmarket, that infamous seminary of iniquity and ill-manners, during the course of the races there; or shall resort to the said races; or shall lose, in any one day, at any game or bet whatsoever, the sum of £500; then, in any of the cases aforesaid, it is my express will that he, my said godson, shall forfeit and pay out of my estate, the sum of £5000, to and for the use of the Dean and Chapter of Westminster.—Lord Chesterfield's Will.

Lord Chesterfield died (March 24, 1773) in this house, desiring by will that his remains might be buried in the next burying-place to the place where he should die, and that the expense of his funeral might not exceed £100. He was accordingly interred in Grosvenor Chapel, in South Audley Street, but his remains were afterwards removed to Shelford in Nottinghamshire. Mr. Magniac leased a portion of the famous garden behind the house for building a row of mansions on, named Chesterfield Gardens, and also pulled down the colonnade, and let the land formerly occupied by the stabling and kitchen offices for building several large mansions thereon.

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¹ Walpole describes the house-warming, which did not take place until February 1752.—Letters, vol. ii. p. 279.